


Til Death Do Us Part

by AriWrote



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fluff and Angst, Immortality, M/M, Reincarnation, The major character death happens before the story but is heavily focus on, maybe? - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-15 08:48:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7215658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AriWrote/pseuds/AriWrote
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being immortal, Ryoma thought, was decidedly not all it cracked up to be. Of course, he’d come to that conclusion around the time he’d had to watch his husband and siblings laid to rest, but it was always good to remind himself of how horrible it really was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Til Death Do Us Part

**Author's Note:**

> Cheesy title is cheesy.

          Being immortal, Ryoma thought, was decidedly not all it cracked up to be. Of course, he’d come to that conclusion around the time he’d had to watch his husband and siblings laid to rest, but it was always good to remind himself of how horrible it really was.

          Being immortal meant you had to disappear into the foreground, become just another faceless employee that no one would missed if one day you just so happened to disappear.

          Being immortal meant never making ties, because eventually they’d die, and your heart could only handle so many cracks before it shattered.

          Being immortal meant you made stupid nostalgia-fueled decisions after finding a flier that announced the grand opening of an exhibit on the ancient Hoshidan and Nohrian Kingdoms in honor of the anniversary of Queen Camilla’s Birthday.

          It doesn’t take long before Ryoma is regretting ever coming. He expected the melancholy seeing bits and pieces of his life locked away behind thick glass would bring. He even expected the sharp stab of pain at the obligatory section dedicated entirely to the insensitively named ‘Wedding Massacre’. He does his best to ignore the bloody Hoshidan wedding garb displayed next to an artist’s rendition of what King Marx might have looked like wearing it. (It looks nothing like him. Even if it did, no artist could capture the beauty of Marx in traditional Hoshidan robes.) However, what truly makes him regret coming is the man that promptly runs into him while he’s in the middle of staring at the portrait of his mother, father, and a younger him.

          It takes him a moment to register that he’s on the ground. When he does, he prepares himself to scold whatever oblivious teenager had run into him. He freezes when he looks up to a familiar face.

          “Oh God, I’m so sorry, sir!” Marx, or at least the man who looks like him, says and Ryoma restrains manic laughter. Of course his voice had to sound like that. He couldn’t just look like Marx, but he had to sound like him as well. Fate truly must have hated him.

          The man offers him a hand and Ryoma takes it. Up close Ryoma can see all the little things that make him different from Marx. The eyes behind the glasses that sit precariously on the bridge of the look-a-like’s nose are a honey brown and not auburn. His hair is just a shade darker than Marx’s. The biggest difference, however, is the man’s height. The difference between Ryoma and this man is only an inch or two, and even that might have been accentuated by the shoes the man was wearing.  If most of Ryoma’s brain hadn’t been focused on keeping his face neutral, he might have appreciated that he didn’t have to look so far up to see eye-to-eye with Marx.

          Beyond that, there isn’t anything that could differentiate this man from Marx. Ryoma wishes there were more. It’d be so much easier if there were more.

          “I really am sorry,” the man says, and Ryoma picks up on another, subtler difference he hadn’t been able to in his shock. His voice is softer. Marx’s voice was stronger, fitting of the general of an army.   Of course, that wasn’t to say he hadn’t heard such a voice come from Marx’s lips. When he’d talked to his siblings, on dark nights where they clung to each other and whispered secrets into each other’s skin, when they’d said their wedding vows…  

          “It’s fine,” Ryoma responds once his voice has returned to him. Realizing a moment later that he’s failed to let go of the man’s hand, he drops it and rubs at the back of his neck, “You’ll want to be more careful next time. There’s no guarantee that the next person you run into is as forgiving as I am.”

          Ryoma’s not certain why he finds himself saying, “My name’s Ryoma, by the way.”

          “My name’s Xander,” he says. Ryoma’s not sure if it’s a good thing that this man doesn’t share Marx’s name. He doesn’t have time to wonder about it as Xander lets out a light chuckle that has Ryoma’s stomach doing somersaults. “Ryoma? Like the prince? Is that why you visited? Wanted to learn more about your namesake?”

          “No, no, no,” Ryoma says, tinges of nervousness sneaking into his tone, “I was just… trying to learn about history? The name is just a coincidence.”

          Smooth. At least Xander seems to accept it. He nods his head and turns towards the portrait, “I’m the same. I think it’s important that we honor our history. So much of it gets lost because people don’t think it’s worth remembering.”

          “Historian?” Ryoma hopes not. He has deep-seated hatred for historians and he didn’t want to hate Xander, not when he looked so much like Marx.

          “Librarian,” Xander says, and maybe Ryoma should have guessed. He’s practically a walking librarian stereotype, down to clothes. Arguably, he still makes them work, but that doesn’t make them any less nerdy.

          Before Ryoma can catch himself, he’s following Xander throughout the museum. Xander’s the kind of company Ryoma hasn’t let himself indulge in in a long while. The conversation came easy and each little laugh that Ryoma can pull from Xander made him feel lighter. Ryoma was a little ashamed to admit that he spent more time admiring Xander than the artwork.

          Eventually, they make it to the part of the exhibit that Ryoma has been avoiding. He keeps his eyes trained forward, and tries not to let how much it’s affecting him show.

          “You know,” Xander says, after they’ve stopped at one of the plaques detailing possible motives the attackers might have had, “there’s this rumor that oldest brother of the Hoshido family managed to escape. They never found his body, you know? I mean it’s all highly implausible. No one could have survived that attack, but well. It’s all rather fantastical to imagine it’s true. Like a fairytale.”

          “Huh,” Ryoma replies, “I guess that’s something you could call it.” Ryoma wouldn’t describe it as a fairytale. The fairytales he’d known hadn’t ended with the prince awakening to find the love of his life and his family slaughtered. Princes in fairytales were awoken by true love’s kiss, not by the pain of organs reforming and righting themselves in his body.

          The conversation dies down a little after that; Ryoma doesn’t have enough energy to hide his pain. To Xander’s credit, he takes it in stride. He must have guessed that Ryoma felt uncomfortable with the section dedicated to the massacre since he doesn’t spend as much time as he had in some of the other sections.

          When they reach the exit, Ryoma waves at Xander and makes to leave. Xander’s hand on his wrist stops him. He turns to Xander, ready to ask what the wrist-grabbing is for, and finds that a blush has situated itself on Xander’s cheeks. “I really do feel bad about running into you earlier. I promise I’m usually not this scatterbrained. I want to make it up to you somehow. We could get coffee sometime?”

           Ryoma blinks. He might not have been the most knowledgeable in romance (and Gods know the years hadn’t help that), but even he could understand what Xander was playing at. There was no way this coffee was because of some accidental collision.

          His brain tells him to refuse. He’d already played with fire when he hadn’t run away as soon as he noticed that Xander looked like Marx. Nothing good could ever come from involving himself with Xander.

          Ryoma meet Xander’s gaze and he knows that despite all of that, he can’t say no. There’d been a reason he hadn’t left earlier.

          He offers Xander a smile and says, “I’d love to. If you’re up to it, I know this great café just around the corner. Best coffee this side of the river.”

**Author's Note:**

> So interesting note! I have no idea if Xander is actually Marx or just a really convincing look-a-like. Nor do I know why Ryoma is immortal. My current running theory would say that it was a wedding blessing gone horribly wrong. Heads up kids, when deciding to use ancient magic to give your King and his husband a long life as a wedding gift, make sure that it's a happy one... and not a vaguely-worded immortality spell.  
> I may or may not come back to this. At the very least I may revisit this AU with a story on Camilla's life as the sole survivor of the massacre.


End file.
